5 Ways to Use Your Church App at Easter

(February 22, 2016) – In terms of the church calendar, Easter is the Super Bowl of Sundays. With the exception of Christmas, Easter presents your church with a unique opportunity—to welcome a flood of newcomers and find a way to engage them enough to stay long-term. It’s only February, but if you’re smart, you’ve already started planning.

We work with hundreds of churches around the country and have gathered some of the top tricks they use to get ready for a successful and fulfilling Easter service. Here are five ways your church can use your mobile app to make a big impact at the holiday:

Remind members to use the app at Easter

If you haven’t been able to promote your app as much as you’d like, now is a great time to get members engaged again. Point members to your app to start preparing for Easter Sunday with service times, parking specifics, and other details for the day. You may even consider posting app-exclusive content or an Easter series they can start reading and taking notes on to get the most out of the Easter sermon.

Promote reserved seats through the app

This won’t be like any other Sunday—it may be standing room only. Give your members and app users a little “edge” by sending push message reminders encouraging them to secure tickets for reserved seats ahead of time.

Encourage invitations and sharing

Put the power in your users’ hands by allowing them to share your app content and invite friends to Easter service. If you set up a sharing/invitation campaign, you can even schedule pushes ahead of time and prepopulate them with Tweets and links for sharing.

Pre-register or check-in a child

No matter how much planning you do, there will be a lot of commotion Easter morning—and navigating the waters with kids won’t make it any easier. Help your members save themselves some time and struggle by providing pre-registration or check-in for their children at daycare or Sunday school directly within the app.

Ask your Lead Pastor to mention the app in-service

In-person engagement still rules—and capturing their attention will be easiest when your pastor is right in front of them on stage. Use that time as an opportunity to promote your app so they can continue the message and engagement with your church long after Easter.

Now is a great time to reassess your push message strategy if you haven’t already. Using push sends your message directly to the home screen of users’ phones, reminding them of your app and your church and prompting them to engage with you whether in-service or at home throughout the week. Need some ideas? Check out 42 Push Notifications Every Church Should Be Sending to jump start push in the Easter season.

Additionally, check out this post from the Super Sunday: Planning Easter for Your Church, complete with a 20-minute video discussion from the author and other experts on efficiently planning for the season.